Two days after last season ended, New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said of getting his team’s payroll under $189 million to avoid Major League Baseball’s luxury tax, “It’s a goal, not a mandate.”

Cashman and owner Hal Steinbrenner repeated that sentiment throughout the early part of the offseason, as the Yankees signed Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran. The Yankees were going to try to be fiscally responsible, but not at the cost of not putting a championship-caliber team on the field.

There is only one mandate in the Bronx, and that mandate never changes: Win everything. The Yankees made a good-faith attempt to do that under the framework of a $189 million payroll for 2014, even letting themselves get outbid by the Seattle Mariners for Robinson Cano.

Now, Masahiro Tanaka is coming to New York for a reported seven years and $155 million, with an opt-out clause after four years, and it’s a 1-8-7 on Project 189. There is no argument that it was worthwhile for the Yankees to forget about their financial pet project in order to sign the 25-year-old right-hander — the only question now is how much further Steinbrenner will be willing to go in pursuit of the only thing that ever matters to the Yankees, another championship.

By now, everyone knows Tanaka’s eye-popping numbers from last year — a 24-0 record and 1.27 ERA for the Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan. For those thinking it may have been a well-timed fluke, over the past three seasons Tanaka has gone 53-9 with a 1.44 ERA, a 0.944 WHIP, 593 strikeouts, 78 walks and 18 home runs allowed in 611 1/3 innings. There will be an adjustment from the Pacific League to the American League, to be sure, but New York is getting a star.

Tanaka slots in at the top of a rotation that also includes CC Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda and Ivan Nova, with Vidal Nuno, David Phelps, Michael Pineda and Adam Warren all candidates for the No. 5 spot. Now that the Yankees have put aside their self-imposed financial goals, though, they should go for more certainty in their rotation and sign Ubaldo Jimenez.

Sabathia, at age 33, is coming off the worst season of his career, having allowed a league-worst 112 earned runs in 2013 while seeing his strikeout total dip to 175, his lowest K count since a 2006 season in which he made four fewer starts. Kuroda, who turns 39 next month, went 0-6 with a 6.56 ERA in his final eight starts of last season. Nova has never made more than 28 starts in a season. Jimenez should be the Yankees’ target because of his durability, with six straight seasons of 31 or more starts, and because of his history of keeping the ball in the ballpark, with only 103 homers allowed in 1275 2/3 innings, despite having spent most of his career with the Colorado Rockies. That’s what makes him a better fit for New York than Ervin Santana, Matt Garza or Bronson Arroyo.

Ubaldo Jimenez (AP Photo)

Adding Jimenez to Tanaka, Sabathia, Kuroda and Nova would give the Yankees a rotation to compete with the Dodgers’ starting group as the best in baseball, with the current candidates for the No. 5 spot serving as the kind of depth that a team so reliant on older players needs.

The Yankees also should get in touch with Grant Balfour and Fernando Rodney, because they can use another top reliever to go along with David Robertson and left-hander Matt Thornton. There’s some talent in the New York bullpen now, but also a lot of uncertainty. Playing in a division where the Red Sox have Koji Uehara set up by Craig Breslow, Edward Mujica and Junichi Tazawa, another top-flight relief arm would better position the Yankees for the inevitable late-inning duels with their ancient rivals.

Another way the Yankees could go after the Red Sox would be to sign Stephen Drew, which would leave Boston without a safety net if Xander Bogaerts or Will Middlebrooks struggles. In New York, Drew would start off as a third baseman, but would also provide better insurance than Brendan Ryan as an everyday option at shortstop if 39-year-old Derek Jeter’s health does not hold up. Ryan would be free to split second base with Brian Roberts, while Kelly Johnson would be able to play the super-utility role that he is best suited to play. What would become of Eduardo Nunez? The Yankees have more important things to worry about than how a career minus-1.7 WAR player fits their roster, because he doesn’t.

If some of this seems like overkill, like the Yankees would be filling positions that already are filled, that is exactly what they should be doing, because a team depending almost exclusively on players over 30 needs to have depth — not only in case of injuries, but to keep those aging players fresh over the course of 162 games. New York signed Beltran when it already had Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, and Alfonso Soriano. The DH spot will be a valuable tool for Joe Girardi to keep good hitters in the lineup while simultaneously easing the burden of innings spent in the field on aging legs.

On his own, Tanaka provides a massive boost to the Yankees’ hopes of returning to the playoffs after missing out for only the second time in the wild-card era. There still is work to do for New York to put forward a championship team in 2014. That’s a goal and a mandate.